Life-Span Developmental Psychology: Methodological Contributions

6
Notes from the Field: On the
Coordinated Use of
Quantitative and Qualitative
Data

M. G. Trend
The Red Road Group

"I pick up something that somebody in baseball has said, and
I ask 'If this were true, what specific consequences could flow
from that truth? If this were true, what else would also be
true?'

Bill James
The Bill James Baseball Abstract 1986

INTRODUCTION

This chapter deals with the use of ethnographic data and quantitative data
on the same research project. My perspective is that of an anthropologist
who spent the early part of his career working on federally funded
evaluations of social programs.

Most of my early projects were team efforts. Research firms or research
organizations (commonly called "evaluation contractors," or more informally, "contract houses") sometimes would hire anthropologists as on-site
researchers. Their job was to gather descriptive information on how an
experimental program was being implemented at the local level. This would
be used to augment quantitative data obtained through surveys and
management information systems.

The desirability of combining qualitative and quantitative approaches
gets a good deal of lip service these days. Writing about interdisciplinary
research has become a minor growth industry. Students are exhorted to
remember that no single discipline or methodology has cornered the market

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